The best body language to use in your online dating profile, according to science

Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy saw her now-husband
for the first time on Facebook.

She noticed his photo, she said in a recent talk at
the 92Y in New York City, because he was positioned "in the most
extreme 'power pose' imaginable."

'Power pose' is a term that Cuddy coined in her 2012
TED Talk, and it describes an expansive posture that can make
you feel more powerful and confident.

Cuddy said her first thought on seeing her husband that way was,
"What a jerk!" And second: "He must have a good sense of humor."

That Cuddy was drawn to her husband because of his body language
isn't as unusual as it sounds. Research suggests that we're more
attracted to people in expansive — as opposed to contracted —
postures, even if we don't consciously realize it.

A 2016
study tested this phenomenon in two settings: speed dating
and online dating.

In the speed-dating experiment, experimenters filmed 144 speed
dates, and reviewed them looking specifically at whether people
sat still or waved their hands and arms a lot. They asked each
person to indicate how attractive they found their partner and
whether they'd like to see their partner again.

Sure enough, people who took up a lot of space with their bodies
were rated more attractive. What's more, people who displayed
open body language were rated higher on dominance, suggesting
that postural expansiveness is attractive because it conveys a
sense of power.

But the researchers wanted to know — could open body language
directly cause you to seem more attractive?

In a second experiment, they created profiles on a GPS-based
dating app for three men and three women.

In one set of profiles, the men and women were pictured in
contractive positions, for example by crossing their arms or
hunching their shoulders.

In the other set of profiles, the same men and women were
pictured in expansive positions, for example by holding their
arms upward in a 'V' or reaching out to grab something.

Results showed that people in expansive postures were selected
more often than those in contractive postures. This effect was
slightly larger for women selecting men.

In other words, it would seem as though open body language does,
in fact, cause people, especially men, to seem more attractive.

In a follow-up experiment, the researchers had another group of
people rate the profile photos on openness and dominance. As it
turns out, when people were rated high on openness, they were
likely to be rated high on dominance, too.